The Starfield Rant - Bethesda's Game Design is OUTDATED

[@mohsenbayati3627]

In Starfield every companion is Jacob Taylor

[@californiansniper2133]

Nahhhhhhhhhh i like vasco

[@CrazyxEnigma]

No. Jacob is still worse than these four.

[@Akeyins]

Jacob is worse but they're all boring af

[@ikennasmash1030]

Nah I actually like Jacob Taylor as a space bro. These "characters" are something else.

[@Rapunzel879]

They make Jacob seem like the best companion ever.

[@jimpapadakis7960]

The irony of Todd Howard telling us to upgrade our PCs to play Starfield when his company has refused to upgrade their engine or formula in the last 10 or so years is unreal.

[@BigBoss-sh2jx]

Man he said that and I couldn’t help but laugh. Then he claims the game is “next gen” it’s the joke of the game. Fallout 76 was “16x the detail” fallout 4 was “it just works” every Bethesda game has one of these jokes. This game is “upgrade your pc, this game is next gen”

[@truerebel5467]

My modded Skyrim look better than this trash. Most definitely not upgrading my pc for something that look like it was made in 2017. Game is so outdated beyond my expectations. I'm not dropping $800 for pc parts just to spend $70 on a game with mouthy immortal npcs. It's unacceptable and played out. Standards are really low when people say this and BG3 are GOTY smh.

[@PsyckoSama]

I had to install mods to get it running at a respectable frame rate. I have a 3090.

[@BigBoss-sh2jx]

@@PsyckoSama “least buggy Bethesda game” they say

[@beargamingtv23]

you what he say 16x the detail everything just works

[@lmao_nope]

You know what is the real immersion breaker for me? Those ancient, mysterious, never-before-seen magical temples of obviously alien origin, the discovery of the century! Every single one within 500 metres of a mining operation, a spaceport, or a civilian outpost.

[@optiondezzo1513]

and every one has the same puzzle. LOL

[@kebubas]

especially after the fact that people found one of the artefacts before they even had to evacuate Earth

[@HarveyDangerLurker]

Holy hell the story made no fucking sense. There is technically time travel because that is how the guy learned about faster than light travel. It makes no sense. There isn't just multiverse garbage. There is fucking time travel.

[@socialanimalmedia]

Supposed to be "explorers" but you never go to a single unexplored planet. Of course, with how little there is to do on the planets you can visit I imagine going to a truly virgin planet would be even lamer.

[@flywingguy4175]

First time I found one, that was my exact thought

[@AlexanderosD]

"outdated" is probably the most accurate and all encompassing description of Bethesda.

[@terrylandess6072]

I'm sure the game will be semi-complete when they finally release its missing parts in DLC installments. They had a good run but decided to crap on the community which lifted them up.

[@victory7763]

But IGN and all the major outlets said this would be "game of the generation" and "revolutionary" before half of them backpeddled upon release. All hype does is make things even worse and set false expectations. Revolutionary is quite the opposite of outdated lol

[@oldsingleplayer3012]

they just cover it with "beautiful graphics", it's like putting makeup on a zombie💀

[@manboy4720]

@@victory7763 what is the opposite of revolutionary? sedentary?

[@teme5529]

Always has been.

[@camarofan2008]

I know I'm late to the party but.... Congratulations Starfield you make Mass Effect Andromeda look like a masterpiece by comparison.

[@toecutter1978]

I am still waiting for that Andromeda DLC to drop any day now.

[@viralityac]

​@@toecutter1978You'll be waiting a long time bro they cancelled any future development on Andromeda back in like 2017

[@elvickRULES]

Gameplay is at least fun in that imo.

[@deanjustdean7818]

I was playing Andromeda for a few hours yesterday and I managed to make Eos suitable for a base to exist on once again. I effected real change in the game world. I have not experienced making any real change in the world of a Badthesda game, ever. And of course I am not counting New Vegas.

[@kyosokutai]

@@deanjustdean7818 Which you shouldn't. New Vegas was not made by Bethesda. I don't know why people keep mentioning it as the outlier as Bethesda had nothing to do with it, besides stiffing its developers on bonuses because metacritic.

[@TheQwertyCast]

The fact that they had free reign to dream up an original Sci-Fi universe and made something so bland it's kind of impressive.

[@Jordo246]

This was my criticism for Mass Effect Andromeda as well. You literally go to another galaxy and the best ideas they could come up with for planets were 2 deserts, snow, some mountains, a jungle and an asteroid. What a waste of potential. The very first planet you visit in that game is by far the most interesting and you never see anything like it for the rest of it.

[@airforcex9412]

@@Jordo246100. When I started Andromeda I was impressed…to be let down soon after. For some reason I do remember having more fun with Andromeda than Starfield, though.

[@TheQwertyCast]

In a weird way I think this may have been partly intentional? I say this because my imagination is filling in all the gaps while playing and I've never had that really (only when playing my own skirmishes in Homeworld)

[@thebobbyllama6410]

@@Jordo246 And then the intelligent species are all bipedal humanoids, with technology exactly on par with what was brought over on the arks. And this other galaxy wasn't getting culled by Reapers!

[@Jordo246]

@@airforcex9412 Andromeda's gameplay was fine but the story and characters were such a massive step down from the trilogy. It's also the fact that we know we'll never get a sequel and it leaves so many plot threads dangling.

[@Trialwolf]

Isn't the Bethesda motto "Why bother fixing and improving things when the fans will do it for us"?

[@torobi-sano9625]

Yes and to me it seems so messed up but apparently people don't mind doing the work or the mods wouldn't exist

[@mykeebaybayon7935]

When they cant even update their game cause it might mess up the mods that fixed their game 💀

[@sc0tt_p]

They obviously need to be hiring the modders. In just a few days they were able to fix dozens of QoL issues that were so painfully obvious to the average player in inquire and creative ways that Bethesda wasn't able or willing to in the years they had to develop the game.

[@osc-oldschoolclips5204]

There’s a few missions that are bugged and you can’t complete them unless you do some backtracking with your saves and it’s like .. bro is Bethesda acknowledging these damn game breaking bugs? The can’t save bug etc..

[@mirafeder7992]

Yes... but it would also help the fans fixing it, if it wouldn't run on more or less the same engine that Morrowind was made on... well they put a bandaid or two on it and gave it 64-bit OS support somewhere down the line... but it is still largely the same engine and it FEELS. Already felt dated in Fallout 4 and Skyrim.

[@bulkvanderhuge9006]

The hilarious thing about Hancock, is if you ever accidentally fired your gun at nothing, while not in combat, he'd say "You see 'em too huh?". That line caught me off guard and had me laughing for quite a few minutes while I was playing FO4

[@jonathanmarth6426]

It's funny until you realise the implications. Obviously they have the code to make NPCs notice you shooting, even if you don't hit anything. Meaning there isn't even an excuse for their NPCs not reacting to you shooting in a public place.

[@Waspinator1998]

@@jonathanmarth6426 NPCs in Skyrim would react to the player swinging a weapon around, even if nothing was hit. Bethesda has had this capability for years, no idea why they didn't do it in Starfield.

[@jonathanmarth6426]

@@Waspinator1998 The answer is pretty easy, albeit not very pleasant. They know their games are going to sell, as long as they deliver the minimum viable product. So they've grown complacent and creatively lazy.

[@Lizards_Lounge]

You jusst reminded me of the lady who scitzed out on that plane.

[@Lizards_Lounge]

@@Waspinator1998 Skyrim knew when you have a fire spell equipped without even having your weapons (or hands) drawn.. As a long time Skyrim fan, this game is worse in almost every conceivable way.

[@Galimeer5]

This is the first creative exercise Todd and his people have done. Fallout was created by a different studio and Bethesda just bought the IP. Elder Scrolls had its roots in DnD fantasy and brought actual writers on board to create the world and lore. So, with their first original IP since the 90s, they had a free opportunity to really flex their creative muscles and show us their boundless imaginations. And they made NASA with guns.

[@lawofanubis2996]

JFC, I just thought about this and you're right.

[@yveltalsea]

It's funny cause there's already so many games that have already done better than starfield. People always talk about Star Citizen and No Mans Sky, but no one brings up Starbound. Yes, a literal 2d pixel art game does procedural space exploration better. The planets are alive, filled with different alien races and hundreds of enemies. Plus, I'd rather take the simple story of Starbound over the thousands of hours of boring and uncanny dialogue in Starfield. Lmfao.

[@jimmyjoe1591]

Exactly and we can all see that todd howard is highly overrated as a game designer.

[@damienrichards9743]

​@@jimmyjoe1591Todd is a game designer? I for sure thought he was a telemarketer that just happens to get hired by a game company and was paid to say things about video games. 🤔

[@ceballos-exe]

NASA with guns...Imma be stealing that one

[@Freqv]

It’s quite immersion breaking when it’s 300 years in the future and there are no vehicles on planets, let alone things like FaceTime or video calls so in order to inform someone of new info you have to fly to them and talk face to face Like imagine DOCKING your ship at Sysdef and never being caught by the fleet yet if you kill a couple pirates in the corner of the galaxy with no witnesses you get a bounty from them. It’s unbelievably immersion breaking

[@rixille]

It's a retextured Fallout 4. Bethesda had so much opportunity to try some interesting, innovative gameplay mechanics with this new IP and blew it by just making it another buggy Fallout 4 with lots of tedium.

[@lukeashe8313]

Behold! The greatest breakthrough of the 24th century! The Walkie Talkie

[@tjenadonn6158]

And it's not like it's impossible to do a far future society with downscaled tech well: just look at "Dune" and the way its world has adapted to the fallout from the Butlerian Jihad, and how different social roles like the Mentat and the Pilots arise to fill the roles once taken by thinking machines. If something that is present in our current society isn't present in your future society you must account for how said thing was removed from society and how society adapted in its absence. Effects have causes, and likewise effects go on to be the causes of subsequent further effects. This is storytelling at it's most basic, and the fact that Bethesda doesn't seem to have grasped it makes their reputation for telling good stories all the more baffling.

[@ghengisdong6714]

​@rixille instead of running across the map to a POI, you have to go through 7 cutscenes, including you jumping to other systems to reach said POI. It's Bethesda, it'll due until ES6 comes out.

[@shadowtheimpure]

If you paid attention, they explained the lore reason. They have faster than light travel for ships, but not for signals. Inside a system, communication is instant but between systems it is unusable. That is why messengers are used to ferry information back and forth across the settled systems.

[@HouseofWhop1917]

Speaking of protected NPCs, there was a character part of the Mars mining quest that makes it pretty obvious he's going to kill you. So while he was walking me to his ship I put a bullet in his head, but he was unkillable. So I reloaded my save and let the scenario play out more. I couldn't persuade him to stand down so I had to kill him... you know the thing I tried to do before, but wasn't allowed to.

[@stevenedwardyoung]

I mean, you actually can persuade him, but yeah, having protected NPCs is dumb af in general

[@rianholmes1139]

​@@stevenedwardyoung I think he meant he failed the persuasion

[@Nickname-ef9tv]

This reminds me of when you could either kill a story NPC as she was going to kill the mission target who was surrendering or let her kill him and have her turn hostile 2-3 missions, that is easily 5 hours gameplay, later. She had been giving out strange vibes from the beginning and some notes you found indicated she was not exactly following the rules, to which you could either catch on or not. The game of course was not Starfield. It was Deus Ex. It came out 23 years ago.

[@robnoel9306]

In Bladur's Gate 3 you can kill anyone at anytime, including all of your companions.

[@Turtle1631991]

@@stevenedwardyoung Need for protected NPCs is sort of side effect of bugthesda game design where characters sometimes just randomly die for bug reasons.

[@Hitmonstahp]

Amazing. Everything you said was completely correct. The illusion of choice in this game is what frustrates me the most. Especially considering Obsidian gave Bethesda the perfect blueprint for crafting an RPG with Fallout: New Vegas. That game released in 2010 and had, what, an 18 month development cycle? And yet, every quest can be cleared in multiple ways, choices matter, and so do the skills and traits you choose. The way you build your character has an impact on your entire playthrough, and on the world around them. I just don't understand how that game can be so good, do so many things right, and yet Starfield has *regressed* in so many ways.

[@deanjustdean7818]

Hitmonstahp. Pretty much every computer role playing game is a display of the designer's philosophy and storytelling skill. Mehthesda is like a twelve year old boy who has just seen Electric Dreams and wants to try to write a hundred thousand word excuse for as many lesbian sex scenes as he can fit. Obsidian is like the writers on Electric Dreams. Larian, on the other hand, are the reincarnation of Heinlein.

[@thebiggestpanda1]

Bethesdas lead writer doesn’t believe in deep stories or allowing for content that can be “missed”. It’s the people making the game.

[@donwald3436]

@@thebiggestpanda1 The story is only there to frame the pew-pew lol. Emil is a clown.

[@CobraAce04]

Starfield is an amazing game that I think is well worth the $5 I’m gonna pay for it in 3 years

[@MaticTheProto]

Well worth the 0€ I won’t spend on it as it’s not worth pirating

[@grizzlywhisker]

@@MaticTheProto I know right? I would never give these people money. I thought about pirating Starfield out of pure curiosity when the game first released, but after looking at the requirements I realized my SSD drive didn't have enough space to install this crap on it... Then after seeing gameplay and reviews, I realized this game is not only not worth the money, but not worth my time and I'm not adding another SSD drive to my PC to play this crap.

[@MaticTheProto]

@@grizzlywhisker precisely.

[@DanielHomeImprovement]

idem

[@distantthunder12ck55]

It's honestly a massive time sink, huge, endless walking in empty, dead worlds, a load screen simulator, repetitive, unimaginative, no immersion. It's just plain dull and not worth your time, even for $0. Play Cyberpunk 2.0 or Baldur's Gate 3 for game that is worth your money. Both are far superior to Borefield dross.

[@Froggsroxx]

The idea of a laser weapon having a scattered/unpredictable spread is the funniest idea to me. It's a light beam, you'd have to have the focusing parts inside moving around to change the angle lmao

[@SergiuGothic]

They must have some random stats generator for the weapons 😂

[@Sabbathtage]

Another thing that drives me crazy with Bethesda laser weapons: Lasers should not have recoil! The real problem with lasers is that they heat up quickly. How much more interesting would lasers be if they had no recoil but you had to manage the heat with heat sinks or needing to give them time to cool. They could have been your "laser accurate" weapon that stays on target after firing but has its own costs. They made lasers boring.

[@seaofenergy2765]

​@@Sabbathtagedude no recoil lasers would be way more boring, its a perfect example of where realism does not equal better gameplay. Plus its 300 years in the future, laser tech could be very different from what we have now.

[@plcdfa]

@@seaofenergy2765 Yeah, maybe photons will develop mass in the next few hundred years, that sounds reasonable XD

[@seaofenergy2765]

@@plcdfa they dont need to develop mass for the firing or energy production mechanism of a laser gun to create recoil.

[@TheKennyboy92]

One of my biggest issues is how outdated the missions are. You are in a futuristic space setting and yet you still have to go back and forth between NPCs during missions instead of calling them. What makes it worse is the loading screens going from different levels of a city as well.

[@Pocketnaut]

I don't mind having to go back to talk to NPCs, It's very rare that fictional universes contain cell phones because they're too OP

[@solaroid4442]

@@Pocketnaut Something something Cyberpunk. Where you can spend time playing the goddamn game instead of running between NPCs.

[@Pocketnaut]

@@solaroid4442 very rare - not frequently come across Never - doesn't happen Word I used: Very rare I would still much rather go up to somebody and speak to them then constantly just hearing people's voices over my gameplay blaring exposition (destiny)

[@solaroid4442]

​@@Pocketnaut Many games have the NPCs narrate to you directly through some sort of audio link, so you don't spend 6 out of 10 hours playing a walking simulator. It's not that rare really, only games with no actual gameplay puff their product with walking.

[@mathiaschristensen1194]

@@solaroid4442Cyberpunk did distant communication and quest turn in really well. Especially with how the characters would actually fully animate during phone calls. The exception however, doesn’t make the rule.

[@AleksiJoensuu]

As soon as I heard "thousand planets to explore" I knew to be very afraid. It's just absolutely obvious to me that there's never going to be a thousand planets with *meaningful content* in them. That in itself isn't scary - it would be fine if there's 999 empty filler planets and one good one, if that one really was good. But when the game director themself brings out "big numbers" as the headline feature of the game, it gives me a message on their priorities. It's the same as with "we have 17 000 endings" or "262 different monsters, 43 weapons, 11 new character classes" and blah blah. The numbers don't matter. Does it have a meaningful, fulfilling, engaging story? Does it have seriously fun gameplay? Does it have a genuinely interesting game world? Does it have beautiful, thought provoking art? Is it challenging or is it casual? You can try asking questions that are relevant to yours and trying to apply the publisher's headline claims to those. "What's the game like?" - "It has a thousand planets!" "Umm... Okay. Well, does the game have a message, or do you learn something about life when you play it?" - "It has 262 different monsters!" "I... Oh boy. Well, what sort of emotions do you think a player might feel while playing?" - "You can play as 11 different classes!" "That's not - oh never mind I'll just go play something else."

[@BasedSociety1]

They pulled that crap with Fallout 3 as well, says there's going to be 300 different endings and turns out to be a lie. If I ever hear that magic number like that again I'm not buying it.

[@elvickRULES]

It’s like Borderlands with its selling point of all these weapon combos but that just means like .02% poison or fire damage or some random variable that doesn’t change much at all.

[@jase276]

If they had even said 100 planets, I would had known that would be some bs. Very obvious this was just bait for modders to have their playground in. All I hoped for was at least 10 fully furnished planets teeming with things to do.

[@Just_a_Jape]

I played through starfield right after beating Baldurs gate 3 and let me tell you that was the wrong order to play those games in

[@WraithReaper09]

Go play BG3 again. Do a Durge playthrough.

[@CernobilRS]

Same and i agree 100%.

[@emmdubb]

Whats hilarious is Larian opted to release early so it didnt overlap with Starfield. They probably did it out of worry of being eclipsed but they ended up being galactically more successful.

[@xLionsxxSmithyx]

Same

[@borginburkes1819]

@@emmdubbBaldurs Gate 3 is so fucking good Bro. The game truly feels next gen

[@oracletv1557]

I'm glad that a lot of gamers are taking off their nostalgia goggles, and realize that Bethesda is a shadow of its former self.

[@thefirsttrillionaire2925]

Yes I’m probably done buying Bethesda games because ES6 will probably suck too since they’re getting praise for this garbaje

[@blickedxb]

Yeah, it's crazy that all it took was microsoft Buying them for people to start doing it... It's almost as if they didn't care until microsoft bought them... Now i'm just wondering when people are gonna do it for nintendo and sony... Or are we not keeping the same energy?

[@mikeehrmantraut1899]

What funny is that while everyone praise Starfield everyone forgot the shady practice that Bethesda did back in 2018

[@alostcause4035]

​@@blickedxbdoing what for nintendo and sony? Did they purchase a studio thats a shadow of its former self as bethesda is? This isnt some conspiracy against xbox. Everyone crapped on fo76 as well and ms didnt own bethesda at that point.

[@blickedxb]

@alostcause4035 So you're not upset that the only thing Sony keeps giving us over and over again is third person over the shoulders with stealth elements, and they're getting ready to release another Spider-Man Game on the same exact map using the same exact assets and still charging as full price? Or that Nintendo has been riding the same I p's for the last 20 years with nothing new. I just want the same energy for everybody, Otherwise it does kind of seem like it's just haters.

[@jabba334]

Gamers forget there's one thing Bethesda excels at - and it's not games. It's hype.

[@drakenseng]

and also excels at wasting ppls time

[@jbbrolic]

I would say they excel at repackaging the same game (Skyrim) seemingly dozens of times and people still buying it.

[@happyspaceinvader508]

@@jbbrolicAnd now you see why. Skyrim was clearly something of an accidental hit.

[@heraissilly]

Thinking about the immortal npcs, i have to bring up baldurs gate 3. In BG3, if you kill an inportant npc, it usually is reflected with new dialog, or even a new npc coming to take their place. An example of this would be allowing the tieflings to die in the goblin invasion, but still defeating the goblins. During your party at the camp, new tieflings will be there to replace the essential ones killed. The fact that Bethesda cannot code in a failsafe, or alternate story paths depending on your decisions is mind boggling

[@tut-4126]

But they... can do it. They have that system in Skyrim with merchants and, don't quote me on it, but I think in Oblivion as well, but it has been more then a decade since I played that one.

[@yveltalsea]

Killing NPCs in BG3 goes deeper than just replacing the most important ones. There's tons of quests that if you kill the quest giver, there's actual consequences, like obviously the quest ending, or choosing to side with the baddies for a certain area. There's an actual choice of who to kill based on your personal character ideals, which has an effect on the overall story.

[@AmurTiger]

Yeah it was a real bad year to release a puddle-deep RPG with BG3 taking the gaming industry by storm.

[@ilcorvo9559]

It’s because they don’t have writers mapping choice and effect, what they have is area/map designers working to an artistic brief which believes that an NPC’s purpose is to give a bit of exposition culminating in an objective (usually to go to a dungeon etc) then finally provide a reward. That’s the depth they go to. Look up Pagliarulo’s “keep it simple stupid” speech

[@alphasword5541]

They don't ever think about things they've implemented before, every previous system is just made on a whim during development and never just. integrated into the design process it seems like. FNV and BG3 show that you can design quests around having to manually come up with a scenario for each character death.

[@Mauwrei]

The fact that most of the positive reviews I’ve seen have come with the caveat that you need a bunch of mods to make it not mind numbing is absolutely wild.

[@LevattWolfheart]

The dumbest part of that is that mods to fix this are probably years off because you need to completely overhaul the game to fix its actual problem: nothing is connected. This is a game that needed emergent gameplay design, but Bethesda is only experienced with hand crafted worlds. Economies need to connect, space needs to be flown through, outpost need to connect to the greater economy, exploration needs to be expanded so you are discovering new things in deep space and the story needs to be deleted and replaced. It needs to basically be star sector lite for casual players.

[@Cryptic0013]

Saying "Starfield is a great game, once you mod the hell out of it" is like telling me a bag of unbleached flour is a great cake, once you add a bunch of other stuff and bake it yourself.

[@agamemnonn1]

I doubt you've seen such a caveat since modding tools haven't been released, so the most we have are retextures. You don't have to lie to try to prove a point.

[@RM_VFX]

It's ironic fans of this are still crapping on Cyberpunk for shipping broken when it was at least a much better looking game that did get fixed.

[@histhoryk2648]

"It's more fun with mods!" Why don't you see that as a virtue of mods, not of the game?

[@jonathanwessner3456]

What i thought funny is that, when asked about the visions, if you say "I didn't have any 'the game ignores you and keeps talking about you having them

[@reece42069]

Seems they’ve learnt from the Fallout 4 speech choices 1. Yes 2. Sarcastic Yes 3. No (Yes) 4. Yes, but why?

[@yellaturd]

I guess it's implied that you are just pointlessly lying by picking that option. We as the player 100% did see a strange vision so it's a weird dialogue option to have regardless.

[@jonathanwessner3456]

@@yellaturd they don't even say anything to that effect. It is just the same dialog as if you'd said yes. It means the choice of answers is pointless. Why script answers if they don't affect the conversation.

[@zlorfik2428]

Because Starfield gives you an illusion of choice. It still all leads you to the same outcome either way. There is very very few quests/dialoguws that actually have meaningfully different outcomes.

[@JayMaverick]

26:20 something I appreciated in Cyberpunk was that most NPCs treat the player with a neutral tone of voice. Instead of spite, sarcasm, or snarky attitude. It's such a tired character design to make everyone rude for no reason.

[@rixille]

Rudeness worked well in Morrowind but that was an RPG where Personality and Speechcraft existed, as well as actual factions which all could change how an NPC treats you.

[@WK-47]

Yeah, it's one of the more baffling design decisions. A lot can be put down to carelessness/thoughtlessness/ineptitude on Beth's part. The only explanation I have for this is that it unconsciously reflects the current state of society IRL, where most people are on edge all the time, and it's like common courtesy has gone out of fashion. Gone are the days of Morrowind, where the society is highly xenophobic, but if you make a name for yourself, you're eventually treated with respect. Now, the whole world is populated by people who are simultaneously naive and overly trusting while being as disagreeable and unpleasant to deal with as the stereotypical moody teenager. Beth really seems to have become complacent - all the "streamlining" since Oblivion is bad enough, but they also behave like they exist in a bubble with no awareness of the player base or how real people function.

[@SocksFCGameArchives]

​@@rixilleespecially as Dunmer were relatively hostile as well

[@Sabbathtage]

I was just talking about this with my gf. Why is nearly every NPC so off-the-cuff shitty to you? This must be what what the writers at Bethesda think is cool but it feels so juvenile, like a disaffected teen wrote it. I even wonder if this is how the folks at Bethesda generally treat each other at work.

[@og_ice_freezer]

Todd was bullied extensively. I talk damaged for life. So he acquired that snarky attitude that look at me, who's laughing now? Hence all the on-the-high-horse attitude from every other NPC. Psychological complexes, man. They define you no matter how successful you are in life.

[@TheAman2008]

28:58 The devs at Obsidian thought of this ahead of players. In Fallout: New Vegas, they created a character in the form of an AI called Yes Man who inhabits a series of robot called a securitrons and can jump from one after another if killed indefinitely. Because of this, any actions taken by the player, the Yes Man/Independent questline will always be available. This means that if all other avenues of completion are impossible (for example, due to high Infamy with all major factions, killing key important characters), the game can still be completed even if a laser or plasma weapon respectively disintegrates or melts him. This does not cause any quests he is associated with to end or fail. In The Outer Worlds, a character be the name of Phineas Vernon Welles, a fugitive scientist who helps the player, cannot be killed because the game makes it so you can kill anyone else you want and still progress the storyline by reading stuff of looting their bodies. If someone absolutely needs to be alive for the story to continue, they are kept away from the player, like Phineas and a chairman character.

[@potato_723]

I like that phineas, while unkillable, can still be sold out. It makes the unkillableness less frustrating. But seriously, between limiting face to face interactions, robots, replacement NPCs, etc, unkillable npcs should be a thing of the past

[@yorhaunit8s]

Also, about that artifact and vision. In Mass Effect 1 you get pretty disturbing vision. Only small pieces, but still - it's intriguing. Later on you get full version of the vision, even more disturbing, and it actually has a meaning. In Starfield you touch an artifact and see just some stars flying around. It's just so bland.

[@YunGGenO77]

So true, like it looks cool but for what reason are we staring at stars and random glowy bits LOL

[@Xaevryn]

Right? I kept waiting for it all to mean something. I made it to NG+7 and just gave up. I kept going hoping for some meaning to it all, but it never came. I was hoping there would be differences in these "new universes" but there wasn't. The main plot has no... plot. The game play is bland, the weapons are bland, the story is bland.

[@yngtrey1638]

Bethesda games have never been flashy, yet they were still successful games. I feel like at this point people would understand that they don’t make games like that. The lore, story and characters are why you play. Starfield definitely had disappointing stuff but to say stuff like the game graphics and art is “bland” is silly. What did you expect? You never played the fallout or scrolls series?

[@yorhaunit8s]

@@yngtrey1638 You missed my point. It's not about graphics, that scene is pre-rendered anyway. I was talking about meaning behind the vision you see after touching an artefact. In Mass Effect you see how reapers rip apart and destroy previous civilization. You learn it later in the story, but from the start it is kinda there. In Starfield... what is the meaning behind the vision you see?

[@yngtrey1638]

@@yorhaunit8s I mean what would you want them to put in the visions? Even if they put the characters from other dimensions you still would have no idea until you progressed far enough in the story to find out because no one would of ever guessed the characters you see in your visions aren’t the same characters…

[@meh9045]

Bethesda caught lightning in a bottle with Skyrim and got really complacent. Perhaps the most telling thing is how similar the facial animations in Starfield looks like Oblivion

[@swedneck]

@@NathanRyan08 skyrim had enough of what made previous games good while also being very large and actually filled with interesting things almost everywhere, plus being approachable for the average person what with NPCs mostly looking like actual people with emotions.

[@dallinjc3]

I posted almost the exact same comment on another review. They are lazy and think they already figured out the winning formula, so now everything they fart out they expect to be worshipped and considered pioneers of the industry like what happened when Skyrim released. "C'mon guys don't you remember Skyrim? Yeahh Skyrim! We're amazing"

[@flyingpaladin617]

You obviously haven't played Starfield if you think that

[@flyingpaladin617]

​@@NathanRyan08wrong

[@LadyDoomsinger]

Skyrim was already a lazy retread of old and good ideas - the only reason it became such a massive success was because Bethesda figured out how to take all their really good ideas from previous games, and streamline it into a more user friendly presentation with more impressive visuals. Skyrim wasn't where they struck gold: Skyrim was where they figured out how to manufacture a convincing gold-substitute.

[@lowkeylaw]

I went back to Cyberpunk 2077 after playing Starfield for 48ish hours. Made me truly appreciate the world building and story telling Cyberpunk has.

[@lennartj.8072]

Not to mention the gameplay and optimization

[@neshdj]

Cyberpunk story is nonsensical for the open world/sandbox(ish) game (and same goes for FO4/FO3 to mention few) and it's ending does not help also (worse than ME:3). At least this time in Starfield we have a story and "ending" that better fits the game format.

[@neshdj]

@@lennartj.8072 compared to Cyberpunk release? That goes in Starfield favor then, I was at least able to play game on release without serious bugs (PC) while Cyberpunk was unplayable for a decent amount of time.

[@lennartj.8072]

@@neshdj Yeah but while Cyberpunk is a great game nowadays we all know Starfield will have exactly 0 work done on it except for the DLC because they expect modders to do all the work and according to Todd and Pete the game works and runs as intended

[@neshdj]

@@lennartj.8072 CBP has structural problems (main story mismatch with the game being biggest one) that I can't see how they can fix. It does not have enough elements for a open world game (did not play "2.0" yet tho) while pushing to be one. As I did for CDPR I'll reserve judgement until I see what post-launch support looks like. THB only game/studio that did that correctly to date is NMS.

[@Phillz91]

Playing Cyberpunk again for the expansion after trying Starfield, I realised how important it is to have NPC do stuff in conversation. Having a character interact with the environment, walk around or even just lean on a railing adds so much over two people awkwardly standing static with a zoomed in camera. Edit: Though I actually liked the lockpicking, I found it more interactive than most systems as far as mini-game puzzle mechanics go and there was actual tangible difference between an easy and master lock. The loot was 100% not worth it though, there seems to be no real relation to lock difficulty and what you get, the reward needs to match the effort.

[@silasstryder]

Lockpicking was never rewarding, even F3 almost never gave you actually good loot with master locks

[@ninochaosdrache3189]

After Starfield, I think I gave Cyberpunk too much shit. Stilly the last gen version is still a pure scam

[@paulzuk1468]

I was actually looking forward to conversations in Cyberpunk ; Meeting with a fixer as part of a big quest made me nervous like it would in real life. In Starfield I was like "Okay go there meet this guy pfeh, so much running", saving the galaxy felt like a chore, because you basically always knew what to expect. Also I *really* appreciated the fact that in the whiz bang sci fi future of Cyberpunk I could actually fckn call someone to let them know a job was done, I didn't have to haul ass across the city just to click on the guy and get your money. Half of Starfield could've been an email.

[@aidankelley2696]

@@paulzuk1468 what i also loved was when i did what the fixer asked they give you a response after the job that is positive, but if you went in guns ablazing they gave you a negative response, tell you you did a poor job... i liked that quality of the game, it felt like my character had real consequences to what the npcs said

[@SkippytheHippie4994]

I played through starfield, quite thoroughly. Shortly after finishing it Phantom Liberty came out and man... Going back to Cyberpunk made me realize just how horrible the writing for starfield was. I was like "My god it feels good to be treated like a reasonably intelligent person by the media I am consuming."

[@Ahov]

Exactly. And I'm glad cyberpunk is getting the appreciation it deserves

[@ttprophet]

i gave up on listening, given that the player choice options have the answers in the questions, nothing the NPC says matters, and i can easily follow the gist of what is going on, then back to menu, quests, set course, fast travel, loading screen. they thought taking the shoe leather out of space travel was a selling point, but all that remains is a bunch of loading screens and then press E on a laptop, and the go back to quest giver.

[@franzosisch5965]

@@Ahov If only it released playable and wasn't falsely advertised. It's a fun game but those two things make people quite angry when putting $70 down for it.

[@larrote6467]

Cyberpunk is just a little bit better; its also an empty world with nothing to do but shoot

[@franzosisch5965]

@@larrote6467 The difference is Cyberpunk gives you multiple flavors of shooting.

[@darkmatter8508]

For me, touching artifacts felt a lot like learning new shouts in Skyrim. The Dragonborn? Starborn? It is a quite similar formula...

[@heyhoojoe]

They even kept the archaic, shitty menu you have to go through every time you want to "equip" another shout - sorry! power.

[@xLionsxxSmithyx]

The mini game to learn these is so tedious too.

[@NoName-ji9mb]

​@xLionsxxSmithyx Agreed. The only way to make it somewhat tolerable is if you get the damn perk that let's you move better in Zero G. A completely optional and somewhat low tier perk considering all the combat perks are alot more important.

[@fenrifegads5571]

@@xLionsxxSmithyx If that's a "mini game" then the main menu of every game ever made also qualifies as a seperate minigame. It's about that engaging and has as many fail states.

[@RadTrav270]

Space Shouts!

[@JohnSmith-ls3um]

I’m so glad Starfield came out at roughly the same time as Baldur’s Gate 3. Side-by-side comparison really highlights Bethesda’s laziness, pirating/not updating old concepts from previous games, and resting on the past. I hope this is a wake-up call for them regarding ES6 and the next Fallout. I don’t hold out hope, though. Starfield is going to make a ton of money and they’re going to use that as the measure of success. Like Disney’s repackaging animated classics into unnecessary remakes for a cash grab, Bethesda’s going to keep doing this crap as long as people keep paying.

[@munchkingod6]

I definitely will not be purchasing anything from BSG again after this. Going from BG3 to Starfield and then from Starfield to Cyberpunk PL was… oof. Brutally unfavorable transitions for SF.

[@BETRvids]

I went into Starfield with zero expectations, and I wondered if Bethesda would wow me. But after playing Starfield, I've been itching to play Skyrim or Fallout 4 again. Even the most basic expectation: being able to explore whole worlds. What I got? Small boxes with randomly generated landmarks and copy pasta bases, with zero ability to venture forward when reaching the border of that area. It tells you to turn around, return to your ship, and fly to a new sector. Fuuuck off, Bethesda.

[@jalilali1415]

thats good news for us we will be saving 70 bucks for something more useful

[@JakeLondonRivers]

Yessss exactly

[@mstrikerwildrift]

Unless Todd Howard and Emil pagliarulo is fired, nothing will change.

[@DevilNeverKnows]

I don't know if I missed something, but having to open the inventory with 3 different button presses just to change my weapon was 50% of the reason I stopped playing before 5 hours had passed

[@AHFxCK]

Agreed, I didn’t even make 5hours

[@FlyfishermanMike]

You can hot key them to the d pad.

[@Charis-d5k]

OK well go play another game

[@VORASTRA]

Every Bethesda game has favourite menu, what's the problem to place weapons there?

[@DevilNeverKnows]

@@VORASTRA I've played 1 bethesda game, I'd have appreciated a text box telling me about the favourites menu. I feel like we're at a point where weapon wheels should be standard though, they work so well. Overall it wasn't a big problem but since I only played for about 5 hours it's the one thing that stood out before I got so bored I uninstalled

[@Lil_Schlonky213]

One of my most memorable disappointments was the museum on New Homestead, supposed to be a bunch of interesting old earth artifacts but its just filled with already existing props and items you find everywhere in the universe, and constellation shit for no reason

[@MADCATMK3103]

Talking about NPC's not reacting, I shoved a dead body in a guard's face and they could not care less. The quest where you go into the Clinic and find a body but can't inform anyone including the Ranger was nuts.

[@BigBoi678]

When I played that mission, I thought I was missing something lol

[@abishkarjungshah4539]

I remember this. there was a murder but no one gives a F. I tried talking to the guy on the computer but to no avail lmao

[@RainmakerLTU]

There is a mission with cloned US president, Genghis Khan, some Egypt queen and few other historic figures. As mission goes you come to knowledge the one of them is actually a clone of murder. You can disclose that info to one or all parties involved. Nothing is done beyond words.

[@DragonMrDarkness]

I remember playing The Outer Worlds and there being a legit reason why the NPCs do that in that game: The first one to acknowledge a death will have to pay for all the funeral costs!

[@gregdavies8259]

I went out of my way to tell the ranger and he gave me some generic lines about how his job was boring....okay buddy see ya...good luck mopping up that blood...

[@01What10]

The more I hear about Starfield; the more happy I am I never wasted my money to buy it.

[@madrigalthemediocre8449]

I'll never not believe the extra year spent on Starfield was just getting it up and running and cutting out tons of stuff they still intended to add. It's just feels " incomplete " for such a massive and worked on game

[@DioBrando-qr6ye]

​@@TheCoolCucumberyou mean the Redfall standards?

[@DioBrando-qr6ye]

​@@xIcyStarzzthe 10/10 were crazy. I maybe paranoid, but I suspect that social media are astroturfed to hell and back, remember the people complaining about the 7 of IGN?

[@sumsar01]

Bethesda likely have completely dated development standard practices and are caught in an legacy engine where changes take ages and they dont want to make a new engine because it would cost them 100rds of millions and it would take years. This in turn results in the becoming slower and slower and making shittier and shittier games. This is pretty much how software deadweight works.

[@natas12rm]

That's modern gaming. Pay for dlc or you get a halfway finished game.

[@TigerGoblin]

The reason they added the unkillable NPCs in Oblivion was their AI behaviours which caused many NPCs to kill each other off screen. So it wasnt even the player that broke said quests. That AI was unique to Oblivion though

[@MrReaperofDead]

Perhaps that same issue traveled into their future games as well? XD Lol that's too funny if true

[@HoneyTwee]

That actually sounds cool. Shame they gave up on radiant AI. Imagine an expanded similar system where your actions in one quest can cause characters to resent each other or even murder one another which you can intervene if you want. And them this cuts you off from quests but takes you on a new story path. Sounds too ambitious for modern bethesda tho tbh lol

[@Zodroo_Tint]

Are you sure? I thought they cut out the Radiant AI from the game in the end.

[@EddieSpaghetti69]

There is some Radient AI left over, like people will pick up food or try to steal it; which leads to *a specific pickpocket always dying* in the slumtown city south of the capital. There is also a unique set of people that buy Skooma from Shady Sam outside of the capital city and consume it in the south town's Skooma den. They run out of cash and can't buy it at 150 gold and end up murdering him off-screen all the time, most people don't know there is a Skooma ring as Shady Sam perishes 3 game days in due to the slummies needing their fix. They removed some of the weirdness. From what I garnered from a decade of dev journals, code diving, and a few interview, that the game often performed like a "Single Player MMO" where the townsfolk ended up doing whacky stuff and getting into antics due to their various allegiances and almost always cascaded into steamrolling the player as the AI would buy up all the gear, lag up the systems as the AI constantly updated a thousand NPC's constantly up to nothing but hi-jinks and always perishing in ways that result in players not being able to finish quests. They fixed these issues by having unimportant NPC's do wandering, the Anvil Hunter comes to mind where he'll often perish to trolls, whereas important NPC's follow basic routes and generate food so they do not shop and never need more gold. It gets out of control with a specific NPC in the capital that most of us remember pickpocketing infinite gold from him; because of leftover scripts carrying through and deciding that he needs more gold to go shopping and never accomplishes it due to the AI. Bit of a long blurb, but I hope it explains some of the reasons why the AI was changed in Oblivion. TL:DR? Oblivion is freakin' weird.

[@user-is7xs1mr9y]

@@EddieSpaghetti69 Thank you so much for writing this. I started playing Oblivion for the first time about a year ago (though not as often as I would like) and I had no idea the radiant AI got so out of hand, it sounds pretty funny. Even though it has been fixed as you pointed out, this game feels so unique and there's always something waiting to surprise me.

[@patnor7354]

A worse example of unkillable characters is in the big quest where the enemy has killed someone close to you (wifey for some) and you still can't kill the enemy because the enemy/devs wants you to go through the quest and pick a side before being allowed justice.

[@Superintendent_ChaImers]

Meanwhile in morrowind you can just murder everything.

[@GeraltofRivia22]

​@@Superintendent_ChaImerssame with Fallout New Vegas.

[@imo098765]

meanwhile other games, you cant even kill someone at all

[@rixille]

Starfield is garbage. Essential NPC's made the game suck. Wokeness made it suck even more, that's on top of a buggy game that is built on top of Skyrim/Fallout 4.

[@imo098765]

@@rixille lol, its the most bug free game BGS has made in 2 decades but go on with fanboy spin

[@KimberlyKjellberg]

"With this character's death, the threads of prophecy have been severed. You may load a saved game, or persist in this doomed world that you have created." I very much prefer that over the hand-heldy essential NPCs all over the place. Some seem protected more because they are annoying than important.

[@ULTRAOutdoorsman]

18:40 btw, as far back as Daggerfall, there were color-coded town maps that displayed where shops were, and you could ask every NPC in town for vector-based directions ("75 steps that way muhlady") to specific services. They actually actively disappeared this feature. That was in 1996.

[@Turtle1631991]

Daggerfall was insanely ambicious dream for it'S time. Probably dream before it's time by 3 decades. Some of the original people are working on a new game called "Wayward Realms"

[@2drealms196]

Daggerfall's development wasn't lead by lord Toddimus, sure he contributed, but he hadn't risen in the ranks yet. Hopefully they learn important lessons from criticisms of this game.

[@jeremytitus9519]

⁠@@2drealms196if they haven’t learned by now, I don’t see why they’d learn before the next one

[@MorfsPrower]

They won't. Bethesda has some of the LAZIEST devs and testers in the industry.

[@jamesfowler489]

yep... I still have my dagggerfall and arena discs

[@hvr8463]

The dialogue after you have romanced a character sounds like things someone that hasnt been in relationship think their partner would say

[@RainmakerLTU]

Gah! the romancing dialogues is like cheap mexican soap opera. Ssssso unnatural, I even skipped them. Dunno, maybe no one I find attractive enough to romance. But I find Ashley Williams (Mass Effect) attractive as hell. Even her voice is fitting.

[@reece42069]

That’s because Bethesda devs haven’t actually ever spoke to a female

[@benofthewest3534]

To be fair, this is true of a LOT of RPG's with romance options. But yes.

[@k.r9494]

Sci fi and video games has to be the most virgin audience so kinda makes sense

[@BrianKotarski]

Now I'm sad. You're right. You laid out your points clearly and crystalized the underlying problem I knew was there, but don't want to acknowledge. It was brave to make this post. It's the exact opposite problem Cyberpunk 2077's launch. They had a buggy launch but I could see the quality of the story. Starfield has less bugs (than Cyberpunk at launch) but doesn't have the story. I love RPGs, but almost every developer is setting their games in fantasy or history. I keep getting so disappointed by Sci-fi/Futuristic games. I'm gonna go cry for a while now.

[@amysteriousviewer3772]

Something Cyberpunk 2077 always had was character. There was something unique beneath the technical mess. Starfield is just a bland and superficial mish-mash of various sci-fi tropes.

[@barryklaus]

Don’t be sad. They still have a good base game that can be improved further down the road and Todd really cemented that they will be supporting this game for years to come. They’ll just have to listen to the gaming community.

[@LandStrider23]

​@@barryklauspfff!

[@kylio95]

It's kind of annoying how Cyberpunk 2077 got abused for it's poor AI, yet Bethesda get away with it. They have even worse AI, the people don't even react when you aim at them or shoot your gun around them. The bullet impact is also horrendous, if you shoot water nothing happens.

[@drakenseng]

thats the problem why have to wait for dlc to make the game better. @@barryklaus

[@NcrRangerGlitz]

Playing starfield right after finishing BG3 had me running right back to BG3

[@johnv6806]

Same

[@drigzmo9419]

gamers lack all nuance today, either that or i just forget most people playing games these days are under 21

[@Tetrapharma]

Totally different genre of game with an entirely different gameplay.

[@drigzmo9419]

@@Tetrapharma but they released a month apart, its the same right?

[@NcrRangerGlitz]

@@Tetrapharma Doesnt change the fact the game is mid at best

[@joseribamarjr5164]

Man, when I discovered that in this entire game there are ONLY 4 cities.... like, WHAT????

[@osc-oldschoolclips5204]

Yeah not enough major cities and .. a small amount of companions and (they all are as good as the game.. mid. At least in my opinion.)

[@dioniscaraus6124]

Bethesda quality

[@j.x.7655]

And the cities are so SMALL， It's hard to believe that human cities were so small in the interstellar age.

[@AndersonClips]

What? There are a lot of places. You have to find them.

[@futurevegan8617]

​@@AndersonClips It seems like they're talking about the major settlements.

[@Superplayer_2]

A better version of Starfield already exsit: Mass Effect

[@_wegota2319_]

Hell, The Outer Worlds seems better too

[@Badookum]

​​@@_wegota2319_fr, I'm now more excited for The outer worlds 2 than The Elder Scrolls 6, which is not good for Bethesda.

[@commandershepard7728]

There is also a really good space combat game already out there. ....I think its called Asteroids :)

[@JotaDeNiro]

​​@@_wegota2319_bruh😂😂 Tell me one single thing that the Outer Worlds does better than Starfield, but please make sure that your answer doesn't came from any kind of pure subjectivism as my partner here in the video did. My buddy Dan talkin about those guns being uninspired and showing the guns of Mass Effect a game that literally tried to emulate the Halo arsenal from the bungie era and showing an alien Gun from the Outer Worlds that resembles a lot to the one that appeared on the Mothership Zeta DLC from FO3... so the joke's on anyone that agreed with those failed arguments

[@Rapunzel879]

@@_wegota2319_The Outer Worlds is a great game, something I can't say about Crapfield.

[@robintst]

The character faces are firmly in the uncanny valley with this game. High quality visuals that are one more step on the path to photorealism and the mouths still lip synch like it's 2008. They're just creepy.

[@yveltalsea]

It's the oblivion expressions and awkward zoom in cutscenes. No other game does it. It's so weird. I have no clue how Todd Howard thinks it looks good, and I'm 10000% sure it was his decision. Also I don't think they know that people have muscles in their face, and without reacting with their nose and eyes, a character smiling just with their mouth is SUPER creepy lol. And the constant eyebrow lifting. It's like they've never talked to another human being before lol.

[@Ellisepha]

@@yveltalsea Exactly it immediately reminded me of Oblivin. Why did they even go back there when FO4 had arguably the best dialogue visuals so far in their catalogue? It was a nice mix between cinematic cutscenes and dynamic animation. I'm not saying FO4 was perfect, but it was the best so far. A lot of the visual styles of Starfield remind me of The Outer Worlds, this visual style of talking to NPCs included.

[@valentinvas6454]

@@yveltalsea Ah yes the awkward zoom in. As outdated as ever. In Fallout 4 they had much better angles and one my favourite thing was simply "exiting" cutscenes by wiggling the mouse even though the conversation continued seemlessly. The "next gen" Starfield is such a step backwards after this. I also couldn't help but laugh when my companion joined a conversation but they were in the silliest position possible like in a corner facing the walls but the camera still cut to them. After all this I fear Elder Scrolls 6 will be barely more than Skyrim with better graphics and a little more polish. Besides graphics and gunplay Starfield has hardly improved upon Fallout 3 in 15 years and 2 console generations.

[@yveltalsea]

@@valentinvas6454 Somehow I think that the facial animations and face models in Starfield are more uncanny than in any previous Bethesda game ever LOL

[@dopaminedrought395]

every scene cutting to a dead-on POV for dialogue put me off the game so quickly. I basically finished the linear prologue and the first couple of fights, then noped out. creepy faces, janky animations, janky character models, but then the snappy camera sealed it for me. if I can't immerse myself in this world because the dialogue is so off-putting, I can't play the rest of the game. I thought maybe it's not all bad, but this video confirms the whole game's vibe is that same one.

[@joshuakern1274]

This is by far the best, most accurate review of Starfield I've seen yet. "The more I play it the less I like it." I felt that in my soul, that's exactly the case.

[@assh1]

When i hit 50 hours and told my friends that i give this game 4/10 they laughed. When they hit 50 hours they realized what i meant.

[@jonathanwessner3456]

Meanwhile, a bunch of fanboys scream any time someone says this.....I agree with you, the game just wasn't fun. i was told "SOme RPG's build slow!" Not any of the hundreds I have played

[@RCKTFNGR]

​@@assh1how come this shit is so accurate? I just hit 50 hours too when I just felt like not playing it anymore. It was really fun until you see what the mechanics are and the game has to offer. From that onwards I feel like rushing the main story just to finish the damn game.

[@NoobCraftCasting]

Yeah I literally had the same opinion progression. 8/10 at first. Got lower over time

[@Vimes86]

To me, it's always been my experience with Bethesda games, I love them from the start and then I realize that the storytelling and npc writing are so low lever that makes me not want to play anymore. I prefer a game with many issue like cyberpunk had but with better storytelling than this soul less stuff.

[@kalaelizabeth]

I absolutely agree entirely. I got so bored in this game and it feels like it's stuck in the past. This isn't the quality I would expect in a 2023 game. And the "it's a bethesda game" excuse is not a good justification of this game not being current.

[@sc0tt_p]

100% - This would of been an amazing well reviewed and received game, if it had come out in 2017. In 2023, nearly every aspect of the game has been done better by another game (and many of them were better in older Bethesda games). How they missed the mark this hard can only be incompliance or apathy.

[@grimfrostoreson5800]

It’s a Bethesda game is a poor excuse, though somewhat justified, implying we’ll accept bugs and a lack of polish at release. But the trade off is the world that they create and the story that they tell and the stories they empower us to experience through their world design. It’s a Bethesda game doesn’t apply to Starfield because there is no immersion, the story sucks, and the side content all feels like busy work.

[@CSRI]

Let me give u a hint. U can use tab or space during the conversation when they say I think hear or speak to take or give it to them. It’s the whole thing about pirates and how to properly beat them otherwise u will be stuck in a 3 head spiral

[@Spiffo0]

sounds like you just don't like sandbox games.

[@RandomWandrer]

Nah, this game is a blast. I guess people have different ideas of what "fun" means. I love the sandbox style and freedom. I could spend all day building ships and hunting stuff. I thought the story was ok. The lore of this IP is fascinating and original. I know Sam was an excellent companion with a great story arc. Actually he was so great (his daughter too) that I can't really comment on the other companions. The faction quests are so much fun. Scaring people wearing my tardigrade costume is so much fun too. And I feel that the less developed parts of the game (barren planets and incomplete plot lines) are excellent foundation for expansion and DLC. And its going to be a modder's playground for decades too. This game is a great gift.

[@FernoFry]

I liked your point about the immortal NPCs. I find it very boring and frustrating that this was how they decided to create fail-safes instead of offering player choice. Its so completely opposite from how BG3 has dealt with things, which offers what feels like endless freedom to the player to make choices.

[@drakenseng]

yeah its always been like this for bethesda companions and 'important' story npcs. they are too critical to the main story line i guess lol.

[@farhankurniawan7567]

BG3 is amazing, none of the npc's are protected with plot armor, i can just kill everyone on the grove and carry on my playthrough. not to mention the dialogue option is night and day to starfield, in starfield its just yes, maybe yes, sarcasm but also yes and no (leave dialogue)

[@zeroxwarrior]

I have to find that mister caption rant on this about fallout 4 that Bethesda cares more about having a doctor in fo4 than your choice of having one. But yeah this has been a failure on Bethesda even if you take account of morrowind the fact you can kill a npc and give you no other option to continue is a failure on them. There plenty of other games that gives you multiple ways to deal with and you can kill npc. FNV allows to be carnage incarnate and get locked out on many things but you can still finish the game. I much rather have a game that trusts me to handle things that a game that must handhold me and put bumpers so I can’t make a gutter ball let me fail damnit.

[@farhankurniawan7567]

@@zeroxwarrior yeah they cant keep getting away with this kind of quality they delivered, and people need to stop defending them. yeah i believe it if they had fun playing this game but the game isnt perfect. far from it

[@BrennanCh06]

It's the anti-BG3

[@antonego9581]

i actually really like the lockpicking minigame, but the problem is there's never anything inside locked containers. theres just nothing cool to find anywhere. fighting with inventory management and weight capacity is awful

[@silasstryder]

Bethesda never properly rewarded people for high lockpicking even F3 never had anything that good in master locked containers

[@ronsandahl274]

The problem is that Bethesda insists on continuing to use their in-house Creation Engine, but without having a dedicated team that only works on improving it. In fact, the only time they work on the Creation Engine is when they take the version used in the last game and monkey with it for the next game. The Creation Engine started as the Gambryo engine that was used in Oblivion and Fallout 3. So they monkeyed with it and made the Creation Engine. And then they toyed with it a bit for each new game, and Starfield is no different. In fact the Creation Engine in Starfield is so similar to the one used in Fallout 4 that the Fallout 4 console codes STILL WORK. The reality is that Todd refuses to bring in the number of workers necessary to make his games (or perhaps he has not been allowed to by the evil Zenimax). You can see this by the fact that the time between Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls 6 is expected to be 17 years. And between Fallout 4 and Fallout 5 will be over 20. He had to pull all the Elder Scrolls experts and Fallout experts off their games to work on Starfield. And even then Starfield still feels at release like it is only 80% of a game. As for me I have over 800 house in two run-throughs of Fallout 4; Starfield took me about 30 hours, and a lot was boring. I've put it aside and am waiting for a couple of updates from Bethesda and for the modders to fix the game.

[@andrevaughn6980]

Fix? Which part of your game was broken?

[@theseb1979]

A different engine won’t fix the boring writing, quests and NPCs

[@Atlessa]

The console commands haven't really changed since Morrowind. And on that note, the same is true for Unreal Engine. Pretty much all of the console commands that worked in Unreal (1999) still work in every unreal engine game to date, so long as you can get the console to open in the first place of course. So... what's your point here exactly? Is Unreal 5 also a bad engine because they kept the same list of commands for 24 years?

[@MatLinnett1]

And even worse, they own id. Yet since they bought them, they've completely killed the licensing of id tech, with only a few other Bethesda-owned studios using it, but never their mainline titles. Before Bethesda bought id, you could make very convincing arguments that id tech was on par with, if not better than Unreal Engine. Hell, maybe it still is (games still using it look fantastic and run incredibly well). But Bethesda (now Microsoft) just don't capitalise on that, and seem happy to let Sweeney Tim take over the world. Even worse, they completely killed off the modding tools for id tech, a crime considering id essentially invented the mod scene. Doesn't help that they estranged then ostracised John Carmack.

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

@@Atlessa The Unreal engine today is basically nothing like it's original versions. They kept taking it apart and building it back up from scratch to fully integrate new features. They kept console command more or less the same to ensure that the devs could navigate and test the new features without having to relearn a new console language every new iteration. Bethesda makes the absolute minimum updates to their engine and in most cases change nothing but the name. Their console commands are the same because their engine is the same. You threw out the Unreal engine argument because you probably heard some other Bethesda defender use that argument without doing 5 second of research to understand how stupid that argument was to bring up in the first place.

[@arthurmiranda8896]

'Creatively bankrupt' That's the best definition for Starfield.

[@dannyyogendra51]

It's getting to the point that I can't bring myself to look forward to AAA releases anymore because chances are no matter how good it looks on paper, I'll probably end up being disappointed 😔

[@josip342]

In my opinion it didnt look good on paper either. Nothing about this game made or makes mi wanna play it. Cyberpunk seems better in every way

[@silasstryder]

Absolutely, only developer I trust and will ever pre-order from is Fromsoft and the day they get complacent like Bethesda and start dumping mid crap out they're going in the "never pre-order" box with all the rest

[@nikosp3156]

All these AAA studio don't care if they release a game even on its preAlpha stage because they depend on the patches that they will eventually release. Quality is not a factor for them anymore, only time- and money-saving products.

[@husky3g]

It's been that way since about 2013. GTA V's PC release and maybe 2015 with Witcher 3. Since then no AAA studio has released any games that are ACTUALLY good. There's not really been a "game of the year" worth game in a very long time. Most games in the last decade have been absolute dogshit. The best games I've played in the last 10 years have been Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Battlebit Remastered and RDR2.

[@celica9288]

Honestly its sad, being a triple a studio used to mean something, that this game had heart and soul put into it, nowadays it just means that its a phoned in game that might, if we're lucky, get good in a years time through patches. Even a mere what, 10-15 years ago that was 1. Difficult and 2. Unacceptable. Its baffling that people will accept half finished games just cause its a triple a studio that used to make good games and good stories

[@righteousham]

I feel very strongly that at some meeting in the early stages of this game's production there was a slide on a projector with a bullet point that read: minimum viable product only.

[@blakewalker84120]

And a few months later, the next slide came out that said "80% of MVP is good enough."

[@trickyrichard]

the agile development cycle and its consequences have been a creative disaster for this industry

[@FourDozenEggs]

Baldurs Gate 3 was the first RPG that I loved playing and it became my favorite game I've ever played. Seeing Bethesda still stuck in their old ways is pathetic to witness. Larian evolved with time and delivered one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time. Bethesda grew stagnant with time and delivered Fallout 4 in space. I have no faith in ES6.

[@yveltalsea]

It's crazy too, because the time spent by Larian between Divinity 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 just SHOWS that they've been improving on literally every aspect of their game design, from cutscenes, to map design, to combat. I don't think ive ever been more impressed by a developer... Other than the guy who made Stardew Valley :3

[@calorinedarkness5232]

If you liked BG3 trust me, there are older rpgs that do what it does better. Though I guess If visuals are really important to you the selection would be limited. Welcome to the fun world of RPGs.

[@justs553]

@@calorinedarkness5232 can you tell what those RPGs are i know about divinity 2

[@jdeltaruff]

All the companions having the same "Liked That" and "Disliked That" points is the single most frustrating thing about this game to me. For RP purposes, my character was a Neon kid who turned his life around to become a UC citizen, but was not above doing some nefarious shit to accomplish his goals. Before I kept digging into the characters, I figured Andreja was going to be the one that was down for my bullshit, Sarah as the goody-two-shoes, Sam as the 50/50, and Barret not caring as long as you did it for science. The fact that I felt those vibes at all means the foundations were there and Bethesda just fucked it up As for the decades old game design, they went with dont fix it if it aint broke, except they broke it.

[@unit220]

I'm glad people are voicing their opinions on this game because at launch I saw nothing but surface-level praise and anyone with a dissenting opinion getting absolutely crucified in comment sections. I had a similar experience as yours where the more I learned about the game, the more I dreaded its arrival. I tried it on gamepass because I wanted to like it but bounced off of it hard. I'm also glad you reviewed the game itself, not the game plus a bunch of mods. Even on launch day people were saying that certain things weren't issues because mods existed to fix them.

[@TheWefikus]

I think the bubble burst very quickly because of Baldurs Gate 3. People had so much fun for a month before the Starfield release, and psychologically, they expected it to carry the same level with Starfield.

[@BigBoss-sh2jx]

It was because of the Xbox shills who had no other game to bother playing on their useless paper weight.

[@BigBoss-sh2jx]

@@TheWefikusBaldurs gate showed what games should be, especially if they wanna up the price of games to 70. I barely see talk of starfield now but I still see people mention Baldurs gate 3. I think we’re gonna be seeing conversation around baldurs gate for years honestly

[@channel45853]

@@BigBoss-sh2jxthe elitism reeks

[@tibitzu365]

"Star Citizen killer" 🤣

[@justsurfin5013]

The unkillable NPC issue reminds me of Skyrim (after you pick a civil war side. You cannot clear the other sides encampment. Specifically the captain / leader cannot be killed. So you cannot just go and clear camps belonging to the other faction. And eventually the soldiers simply respawn).

[@christianwhalen9263]

This always bothered me so much! It’s like they just can’t fully let you the player make a decision, ever

[@kalebquinn6250]

I was so pissed when the “open world” game forced me to do something clearly stupid before anything else. The comparison to ME1 was mind blowing same concept. (Touch alien device to launch story) but in ME1 you are saving a friend and it works. In SF hey non-NPC these sensor readings are weird i don’t like it go check it out for us.

[@reallybigjohnson]

They give you this really fun ship editor but you don't actually get to use your ship except in orbits of planets and moons. You can't explore a nebula you see or hide in a giant ice asteroid field. I did an experiment where I screenshotted every time I dropped out of grav drive. Every single screen shot looked almost identical with the exception of the planet or moon. Currently playing and thoroughly enjoying Cyberpunk 2.0.

[@Spiffo0]

sometimes you drop out of a grav jump into an asteroid field or a field of debris from a destroyed space station and you can grab salvage. Why lie?

[@Notallowed101]

meh even cyberpunk is lacklustre. Find myself skipping a lot of dialogue since I've played it before. Its like being served a burger in a rotten bun, then going back a year later to have a fresh burger, now the bun has no mould but every bite still reminds you of the first time. And Cyberpunk has basically two choices in the game that have a small effect on the world and that's that. The "best" ending in Cyberpunk you get by pushing though the Ludonarrative dissonance, and doing all the sidequests - "Yes I only have days to live but here I am going out of my way to do tonnes of side quests..."

[@gdwnet]

Enjoying cyberpunk 2.0? The one that pulls you out of the game the instant you speed down a road and all the traffic lights turn green because CDPR just slapped some basic textures on it? That game. 😂😂

[@gdwnet]

@@Notallowed101_"Yes I only have days to live but here I am going out of my way to do tonnes of side quests..."_ And it's something that comes up at the start of the game then quietly gets shelved. Hell, The DLC means it makes even less sense. V, our mercenary in clown shoes (he/she must be with those footstep sounds) is dying due to a brain implant but they can do side quests, round up missing taxis, even have a side trip to dogtown in DLC land because time isn't a factor...... oh wait, yes it is but not really.......... And he is something else I don't get - at the start of the game you meet trauma team and they are badasses yet throughout the rest of the game you never seen them swopping in to save people. Are you seriously saying that of all of the people I've randomly mowed down not a single one is part of that exclusive club? Not one? Okay then......

[@icebergwalrus7775]

@@Spiffo0 ah yes arriving at the location but with floating rocks around that maybe have (2) Iron, so exciting

[@YorkTacticalGaming]

i'm soooo happy that someone else feels like this game was mid af. Getting so tired of seeing everyone putting up shit like GOTY starfield! and It's sooooo good. Bro the writing alone is enough to drop it to a 7 out of 10

[@SHVRWK]

Seems that IGN wasn't wrong after all.

[@ThirsttyRecon]

@@SHVRWK IGN's 7/10 wasnt wrong. Starfield fans were malding that the game didnt get a 10/10. The game is extremely mid.

[@Seneschal914]

​@@SHVRWKno, they were wrong. Game is 4 at best.

[@Ahglock]

The writing is solid, and it might not be perfect but its far better than a 7 out of 10.

[@timmcdonald9873]

​@@Ahglockyou can like what you want, but the dialogue is objectively awful

[@revoltingpeasantry8796]

You can find a not segmented open world in Gothic 3 from 2006, a shame that the Gothic and Risen titles are not widely known in the US. The first two Gothics were early examples of immersive open world action rpgs from 2001-2002.

[@lukejohnson3149]

The most articulate criticism of this game I have heard so far. I found myself nodding over and over in agreement. Solid video.

[@SherLock55]

Everything he said rings true, the only redeeming quality of this game is that modders will make it awesome eventually, from much higher quality models, better companions, filling in the empty worlds, better combat and gore mechanics etc etc. Give this 2-3 years and it will be worth a playthrough, as of now it's one of the dullest experiences in modern gaming.

[@randallporter1404]

@@SherLock55 Modding a game to make it playable is no longer a redeeming quality for me. After over 3000 hours in FO4 I have had enough. When I have to spend an entire day downloading and reinstalling mods, _to make the game playable_, because Bethesda installed new content that I have no intention of buying, then Bethesda needs to fix their damn engine and bugs themselves.

[@omensoffate]

@@SherLock55gross

[@roserevancroix2308]

This is garbage, I thought they would make the best game ever to prove to us that they know how to do rpgs. This is not even an rpg, it's trash, now I don't feel so confident about the next elder scrolls...it's probably going to be another toxic woke piece of s**t that insult gamers and fans instead of giving them a great product.

[@secretagentcat]

@@randallporter1404 it took me 3 days to get fallout 4 to run over 144fps without breaking. they need a new engine foremost. so glad the last bethesda game i bought was 8 bucks, and im glad i got the repack instead of the license.

[@THEMilkSHAIKH]

I didn't realize how good Cyberpunk 2077 was until I played Starfield.

[@ruok3351]

I realized how shallow Cyberpunk 2077 actually is because its a Far Cry clone.

[@ItsFuseFX]

@@ruok3351 it's similar, but i'd say CyberPunk has alot more going on than Far cry.

[@bsherman8236]

Cyberpunk is actually a masterpiece compared to all the trash we get now

[@LandStrider23]

Cyberpunk is and, despite its launch, been awesome

[@RainmakerLTU]

And here I thought why Cyberpunk has sssso many food or drink items, when I saw the same in Starfield, but with so low amount to health. Another copy of good idea from other games.

[@jovhonokamoto9397]

As soon as Cyberpunk 2.0 dropped I stopped playing starfield. No regrets whatsoever.

[@boiledelephant]

Speaking of weapons - I think Doom 2016 and Halo CE/2 showed that you don't even have to reinvent the wheel to make guns feel really fresh and interesting. Just slight revisions to the formula like micro-rockets, weird fire modes, addons - hell, the Needler in Halo was just a slow projectile gun, but adding the homing behaviour and delayed detonation made it feel totally new and hilariously fun to use. Ditto the sticky grenades. And the energy sword's lock-on-and-pounce behaviour. Those aren't massive leaps, just little changes for flavour, but they ended up being iconic and vital spice. Edit, forgot to even mention Destiny 2, which has written a whole playbook on how to make guns more interesting and fun without really changing the formula of FPS.

[@Rdasboss]

Yes the biggest problem with starfield is that lack of reaction to your actions and static nature of the world. There is some basic fun to be had, but yeah once you realize your actions dont matter it just zaps any enthusiasm for the game

[@Drstrange3000]

Once I've noticed this a lot of games lost their appeal. I hope static worlds start to fizzle out. Decrease the scope, but make the world feel a lot more dynamic and reactive.

[@BryanBagehi]

Only reason Bethesda game enemies have so much health is because the AI is so bad that making them a bullet sponge seems to be their way of making it more "difficult." Enemies just walk straight up to you, letting you gun them down. Slowly.

[@TheXennial79]

I just watched an interview with T. Howard. He stated they deliberately made the AI dumb.... because ya know. Don't want the game to be too challenging. Or at all...

[@missmia196]

​​@@TheXennial79hmmm, a lie on Todd Howard's end, or a lie? 🤔

[@saltyexxer8253]

​@@missmia196His lips were moving. That's Todd Howard's tell.

[@HSG4meR]

​@@TheXennial79the game is also family friendly, like game made for children. You can't dismember NPCs, you can't curse, meaning you can only be politely evil and any evil doing comes from the gameplay, like shooting innocent people and commiting piracy acts, which usually influences nothing in the role-playing experience.

[@tenryuta]

bosses having big health sure, but if you use a good gun, everything dies fast, like maggies, particle doohicky a or b.

[@PibbXtraGaming]

Something that really started to wear on me was the fact that after i joined the Crimson Fleet, i was getting into way less combat encounters even in the main story. Most of the enemies populating these POI's end up being Crimson Fleet so its just me and my companion awkwardly walking in and getting our quest item and leaving. Like, couldnt Bethesda have populated these spaces with spacers or Ecliptic or literally anything else? Just goes to show how little the game accounts for a player's actions/choices

[@_Jay_Maker_]

Do you know why? Because when you choose Pirates, you're supposed to play the game _in reverse._ Those dead moons and derelict Outposts they in habit? _They're your neighbors._ You're supposed to live there. "But what about combat? Where do I go to fight?" You go where they go. You raid _settled systems._ You hit New Atlantis and Cheyenne. You chill at the Den or the Key or the Red Mile. It's just that this game is so fucking myopic that _nothing inspires you to do that._ Congratulations. Don't play Todd's game. Play your own.

[@lucifer0247]

They are pirates and you are too. So they will not attack you. Then look for other POIs, there are still Spacer, Ecliptic and Varuun

[@punish01]

Same thing happend to me xD I run out of "bad guy" questlines and decided to rush main story. All locations with artifacts were populated by pirates. I simply uninstalled, how can you design a game and have an audacity to call it a RPG when you can't even implement a simple check "is he allied with those guys? alright than replace those enemies with someone hostile"

[@Sneakyboson]

If you're a pirate shouldn't you be attacking and boarding innocent ships? Go start fights with the UC and Freestar. Use your imagination.

[@punish01]

@@Sneakyboson and for how long you think it is fun to do same radiant quests again and again? Fast travel to location from mission's menu -> open chat with a ship -> yo give me your cargo -> sure, just don't kill us -> fast travel back through mission's menu and get money Start a fight with the factions? Yeah sure, wipe them easily, 100k bounty which i have to pay back through mass crafting in order to do any missions which require landing on planets to talk to NPCs, distant future without space-emails "fun"

[@かあ-t8j6n]

The fact that in my game, Barrett did nothing but ask me for money, like three times, and then died right after that kinda tipped me off to the fact that they didn’t really think through the companion system in this game. (I never found out what happened to his husband)

[@onomee130]

"dont worry guys, the mods will come to fix the game" todd howard

[@arobotarmy9878]

Starfield: “In space, no one can hear you yawn.”

[@UbiDoobyBanooby]

After Witcher 3 I said “man, Bethesda is gonna have to step it up” and it was exactly because of their game design. I thought that their “stop and zoom” dialogue cutscenes was not gonna cut it anymore. We need cinematic cutscenes. This was just one of the very few gripes. I thought surely they wouldn’t keep up the same shit. But they did. And I can believe it. Its halfway insulting.

[@planescaped]

The whole being worried about killing an important NPC game design excuse is not even valid anymore in this age of constant and reliable autosaves. There is no reason to have immortal NPC's anymore. It is truly just outdated game design. And it is doubly stupid in a game with infinite NG+ that encourages you to try new things. They have built-in second chances and they still kept this universally hated mechanic. Just baffling... O_o

[@franciscor390]

This is what happens when you jump on the ESG bandwagon you get Sci fi written by soccer moms.

[@LandStrider23]

And npcs that cater to blue hair land whales and soyboys

[@kylio95]

Yeah tbh watching the gameplay reveals and looking at some of the new employees there, I'm hardly surprised.

[@jamescampbell1276]

While playing starfield, there is random wall art in different locations and one picture that really sticks out to me is what looks like a hand drawn stick figure yelling "get your head out of the clouds" to another stick figure and i can't help but think its Todd Howard yelling at his developers for wanting to spend time on development

[@peckneck2439]

Starfield IS Outdated, but it's requirements are anything but. Gotta love how with modern gaming you need 300% more power to comfortably run games that look 10% better than ones released just year or two ago.

[@yt_hatesfreespeech]

its because optimizing the game comes at a cost to Bethesda, but upgrading PC comes at a cost to the consumer, its a really easy decision for Todd. i mean they havent even changed the game engine in over 15yrs, just keep updating it.....

[@pinnacleevolution1634]

They expected the graphics would carry their asses, sure as hell the writing and uninspired quest design would have not done so. 8 years waiting for.... this.

[@deifieddata4462]

This was the first game to ever get me to skip dialogue, and not because I didn't care. I'd literally see the options on hand and think "why would I say any of those things", and skip right to the quest relevant dialogue.

[@ScottTempler]

Cyberpunk has better guns than starfield, and the backstory on Judy and Jackie is Excellent, made me care about them. I don't care about anyone in Starfield.

[@DetectivePikachu37347]

Even Mass Effect Andromeda was more impressing.

[@sillylittlesheepjax6009]

judy overrated

[@kylio95]

The Companions are so fucking bland lmao

[@RainmakerLTU]

@@DetectivePikachu37347 Andromeda starts to feel an OK game when you stop thinking and expecting it be/act a Mass Effect game. Without ME label, it is not too bad generic RPG.

[@ThePeteriarchy]

Half-Life 1 and Dark Souls both still railroaded you into the main path while having every NPC be killable, and Elden Ring has areas in which you can't kill NPCs, but for reasons that are at least explained, like the Roundtable Hold's serenity, and anyone outside those safe areas are fair game, usually at the cost of finishing their side stories. It's been done by so many games, even ones that released before Oblivion. It's not impossible to have a game that accounts for player choice and still avoid breaking the main quest or needing alternate paths.

[@Leon_2777]

If Mass Effect: Andromeda came out in 2023 it would be universally loved. I like Starfield, but the ceiling is not very high with this one. I feel their best efforts were put into the Shipbuilding and storylines, but very little else was fleshed out. I have been swapping between Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, and Cyberpunk 2077, and Starfield is not even comparable to the quality and depth of the other 2.

[@WhaleDisease]

Yeh, I played through Baldur's Gate 3 act 1 many times - and it's always fun. Starfield is boring from start to finish.

[@Three60Mafia]

yeah the ship building is deep but its buried under terrible interface and lack of information so most people will probably give right the fuck up.

[@meoff7602]

​@@Three60MafiaShip building is all Starfield has going for it.

[@kylio95]

ME:A was awful, lets not even try it. Starfield is also shit. Even if Mass Effect Andromeda wasn't a buggy mess, it fails on narrative, diaalogue, and lore alone, which is the main strength of the ME universe.

[@drakenseng]

i agree. it seems they focused on creating all the useless junk you can pickup like every other bethesda game but in this game they are actually useless. the companions are some of the worst compared to previous games. and the factions have no impact with the main story or to each other.

[@waynebutane1338]

I totally felt the same about feeling worse about the game the longer I played it. When I started playing it I was thinking how cool it was to have a big open world Sci-Fi game, space ships, base building, exploration. Then after playing through the main story I was thinking "Hmm, a bit underwhelming, but at least there is stuff to do still", then I noticed how many of the side quests were pretty boring, then I noticed how building a base is basically pointless (You can get more than enough money from just doing missions and trading a bit to buy the best ship), exploration was just the same structures over and over again... There are some things I still like about the game, for example the feeling of Mars or some other harsh planets, but overall, looking back at it, it was just "Okay". I'm still not mad at myself for buying it because I did have fun with it, but it wasn't the "next big thing" that people thought it would be.

[@GabrielLyrio369]

Finally people are starting to make precise reviews about Starfield instead of just pretending the game is revolutionary

[@ludovic1607]

Great rant and 100% on point. Especially the dialogue part. I’m a fiend for exhausting dialogue options in rpgs as well, but starfield is the first I can think of where I just gave up doing so, because of how redundant and uninteresting anything NPCs had to say was. I noticed also - because of frequent afking - is that legit almost every npc has several unique lines of dialogue addressing the player for not responding. I.e “hey are you still there?”, “Ughhh you ok there?” etc etc. Totally pointless and surely contributed to inflating the total amount of dialogue lines Bethesda loves to use as a selling point.

[@BlueBARv5]

The saddest part is Xbox have gone so0 Long without games the fan base convince themselves Starfield is a Masterpiece...🥺

[@AA53057]

The saddest part is you believe that

[@VelehkSain]

Idk man I have an Xbox, a ps5, a switch. Plenty of titles for me to play and I’m thoroughly addicted to and having a blast in starfield. If you don’t enjoy it that’s great but don’t be upset that other people like it

[@brandonleeiacocca6640]

Um...are you like 12? I thought the rest of us are gainfully employed adults that can buy other consoles or better yet...rocking a 4090rtx..

[@GamerNXR]

​​@@AA53057somebody has his feelings hurt 🤦‍♂️. 3rd party games, forza and halo is all Xbox has gotten as of late. And the less we say about how they handled halo the better. Hopefully this all changes for the better.

[@AA53057]

@@GamerNXR I agree Xbox doesn’t have many exclusives to offer. That’s why I have both consoles and a pc. Longtime Bethesda fan since Morrowind. No complaints about their design philosophy on Starfield, not gonna catch some feelings over NPC comments formulated by trolls or people that can’t fathom differences in opinion/preference. The part I was criticizing were the people complaining about others liking a game that they don’t like… after watching a handful of content creators air out their negative opinions and thinking everyone one else should agree with them, if they don’t, it must be some emotional compensation and not the fact that different people like different games. There’s plenty of valid criticism for starfield, but some of it is awfully creative.

[@JELLYBABIESdnb]

The weapon design in The Ascent is absolutely spectacular! So much creativity from the devs. I wanted something similar from Starfield

[@iDreamOfOkra]

Half-life 2 had some of the best and memorable weapons I’ve ever seen. This is supposed to be a futuristic space game and he weapons pretty much suck. Just different versions of the same three classes with nothing really unique about them.

[@InstagramWanker]

The Ascent was amazing from world building, skills, tech, enemies & music! too, better than cyberpunk too

[@HHFNK101]

glad to see The Ascent here, a true cyberpunk experience.

[@Granatenman]

I dont know how people can still invest in a company that lied and betrayed us with Fallout 76 in a way that was so narcissistic and selfish. IMO even Fallout 76 should be dead by now. But as long as we keep investing in such behaviour nothing will change.

[@darthvaderreviews6926]

The most baffling thing about essential NPCs in Starfield to me is that Fallout 4 already took loads of cues in story structure from New Vegas, (the companions system and main quest forcing you to side with one of four factions) which is a game with almost no essential NPCs as part of its story structure. (because yes man's quests can't be failed) Then, Starfield's story feels _designed_ so no essential NPCs are required, literally all Starfield Guy needs to do for the plot is touch enough alien gobbledegook. Bethesda could've easily designed that main quest artifact hunting to be clearable without dialogue (or include a yes man esque immortal failsafe, like starborn voices start talking to you if you've murdered constellation) _and just allow_ all other quests to be failed But Bethesda STILL insist on flooding the game with essential NPCs when they don't have an excuse anymore

[@somnolence5339]

Playing Cyberpunk after Starfield: "Perhaps I treated you too harshly" :D

[@sydhamelin1265]

Thoroughly enjoyed this video - highly entertaining, and also pretty darn spot on. The last few Bethesda games I played, FO4, Skyrim, Oblivion....all had a way of pulling me into the world. Even if it wasn't through the story...actually, it never was through the story, but always the exploration, which paid off. But those games gave you motivation to explore. In Fallout 4, for example, you walk out of the vault, into a wasteland, and all you have is your vault suit, a gun, and a few supplies. So you instinctively start searching for anything you might need. Then, when you get Sanctuary going, you're really into gathering mode, so more exploring. Oblivion was amazing - you crawl through the sewers to get out of prison, and you walk out feeling like a free person, who can literally go become whatever they want to. But again, you're out of prison, with some beat up equipment, so you need to start exploring, getting to know the area, etc... In Starfield, you come out of a mine after 5 minutes of work, are handed a ship, and then told to go to a pirate base, where you just don't have any urgency. After clearing the base, you're looking at a million different pieces of loot, with no idea what you should take or leave. Not to mention that you leave the mine, then press a button to board the ship, another button to go to the base, another button to go to the city. They really needed the make the game smaller, and have more seamless area. I played it for a couple hours and called it. I have BG3 and Cyberpunk to play.

[@Acueil]

Can you still refund Starfield?

[@sydhamelin1265]

@@Acueil I didn't buy it, I played someone else's copy. I had it on my wishlist initially, then I saw gameplay footage and waited for someone I know to get it. Then played it, and removed it from my wishlist. I got up to the point where you meet the explorer club, and it was all in one sitting.

[@yorhaunit8s]

Lol, you remind me of my friend. He was excited to buy Starfield, I said I won't have time for it anyway, between BG3 and Cyberpunk 2.0 + Phantom Liberty. Next day after Starfield release he is back to BG3.

[@sydhamelin1265]

@@yorhaunit8s My friend and I had the same take. We were both looking forward, but hesitant. With BG3 and Cyberpunk we both joked around that we could wait until Starfield went on sale. I threw it on my wishlist and dug into BG3 and 2.0. Then, a couple weeks ago I got to play it for a couple hours, and I really thought that I'd at least find that 'Bethesda Zen', where you get comfortable just exploring and looting - but that never kicked in. When I got to the first major hub I just said 'nah'. I then told my friend about the experience and we both removed it from our wishlists. I'll keep my eye on it. The modding community might come out with a "planets are now interesting" mod. My problem seems to be the widespread criticism, that the fast travel is mandatory, and kills the immersion. Imagine if Cyberpunk had you fast travel to actually get into your car, then from your car, fast travel to the part of Night City, with no ability to just drive there.

[@ridergilwin1494]

There was a certain charm FO4, Obilvion, Skyrim, and the rest of the Bethesda titles from 10-20 years ago had. Everything I’ve seen of Starfield, though, just feels… incorrect. It doesn’t feel the same. Doesn’t have that same charm.

[@isxuros753]

Fallout NV and Morrowind are two of my all-time favorite games. I got so immersed in those games. Skyrim came along, and although I certainly enjoyed a lot of my time with it, I couldn't shake the feeling that something about the game felt off. After listening to some criticisms of Skyrim, eventually the nostalgia wore off and I realized it was a hollow shell of an RPG. I also realized my love for FNV is really thanks to Obsidian, not Bethesda. TES3 was Bethesda's peak in my opinion. Last year my wife (girlfriend at the time) bought me Elden Ring, which led to me discovering the SoulsBorne genre, and that was pretty much the nail in the coffin for my Bethesda nostalgia. Their games feel so mediocre and uninspired now. You could give me a free copy of Starfield and I guarantee you I would never get around to playing it. If you enjoy their games, that's fine, no hate.

[@landondonovanify]

Elden Ring is pure joy compared to this slop

[@whwhywhywhywhywhywhy]

Pretty much exactly my experience. Oblivion and morrowind were fun. Fo3 was super bland and everything was the same color and couldn't finish it. FO4 was fun if you only followed the main plot and ignored the bloat. Skyrim was soo boring, all the interesting jank and weird writing mostly gone, combat super boring. Just a flat game with so little depth the bredth didn't matter. And Bethesda has always had a hard time with making exploration have meaningful rewards

[@eldenctlhulhu7278]

If you enjoy old bethesda, i can highly recommend Cyberpunk. It is now completely fixed and side/main quests are amaizing

[@GameTimeNLL]

I have tried skyrim numerous amount of times. As many say its a masterpiece etc. But i am bored out of my mind everytime i play it. The only reason i could imagine for people liking skyrim so much is the nostalgia for it being such a big game at the time. A big open fantasy world which seemed to have no end. (Better open world games were more obscure then) but to me its just even a downgrade from oblivion. And there isnt really any objective innovation. Aside from other studios being inspired by its scope.

[@ekki1993]

Bethesda has been screwing up since Morrowind because that was when Todd ascended to his current position. They bought the Fallout franchise and stripped it of a lot of its interesting elements, much like with The Elder Scrolls, in favour of pretty graphics and a physics sandbox. What you remember as good from Bethesda was the aftertaste of the franchises they are currently dismantling for profits.

[@sengan2475]

Every single time they make a game it's more dumbed down than the last

[@hawgfancolby]

I just want to add on the Andreja loyalty quest (from experience), if you spare the guy at the end, you can point blank one shot kill him afterwards and she won't react nor will any consequences come of it. No bounties, no relationship changes, nothing. Lol

[@Flyon86]

Yeah, the lack of world/character reactivity compared to even older bethesda games is really disappointing. In Skyrim if you walked around a town with your weapon out guards would tell you to put it away. Starfield you can shoot around town all day and no one reacts unless you hit an npc.

[@RainmakerLTU]

There are more quests, when you can kill main quest giver after quest ends. And nothing gonna happen. You're right - no consequences is one of biggest problems.

[@Aegis_Mind]

I finished the crimson fleet quest line and Sam was so pissed. Right after he vented I was like “hey how do you feel about our relationship? Wanna get married?” Then we got married 🤣

[@plainluke722]

Fallout 4 and Skyrim are two of my favourite games because of the nature of the exploration. Its actually insane how Bethesda has flopped exploration in Starfield

[@tifapanties25]

Exactly

[@cattrucker8257]

Real talk though, I hate Fallout 4's storywriting with a burning passion but its world is just insanely good exploration-wise, to the point where I pretend the story doesn't exist and it's just a crazy atmospheric survival game with emergent storytelling only. Skyrim's is bland and simplistic rather than outright terrible, but it's a similar effect there, very few people who ever played Skyrim really "finish" it but everyone gets into that exploration and world-immersion experience.

[@crescentmoon256]

have you finished star field ?

[@darkhobo]

You should try Elden Ring.

[@drakenseng]

and don't forget about how the factions have no impact on the main story; no boss/elite monsters battles so new gear and powers aren't worth getting either.

[@thoraero]

Landed on Neon the first time Got a mission to handle gangs Planned to clean the place Switched companions to Andreja (since she appeared to be on the dark side the most) Cleansed bad guys in the city Andreja disliked what I did. I can only say I am utterly disappointed with Starfield companions.

[@Catonzo]

While also a dated game (even by the release time) Fallout 4 has a sort of charm to it that brings me back. I enjoy the environments, the music, the freedom. The writing is vastly undercooked and it never made sense that Nora should ever be able to survive in such a world to begin with, while Nate barely is passable as he is at least capable of handling guns and survival. They could have made one single writing effort there; a time skip sort of thing to give your character time to acclimate to the new world and learn new scrapping skills from, oh.. maybe Sturges? But I digress.. point was that poor writing can still be accepted if the world is decent and the mechanics passable. From what I see with Starfield is that EVERYTHING is practically unpassable. The game looks nowhere near cozy to play as the atmosphere is all cold, grey, dull and just bland. The exploration is highly unsatisfying. The puzzles and quests repeated (going by what people say) over and over again. NPCs more stupid than a molerat. There's just nothing about this game that screams development time. The game was designed to force you to play long enough to make a return option void. Bethesda have become cynical in their game development. And that is not because of Microsoft... this is something that began well back with Skyrim. Beautiful outer shell, but extremely lacking in actual finesse and content. Only the main storylines have any sort of care given to them and it may not even be good. No, I will never buy any Bethesda game again before I hear they scrap this engine. Piracy is the life for me. The games are practically developed by the modders anyway. I'd much rather give money to them over Bethesda.

[@ichigokage]

Thankfully I never bought it but every aspect of Fallout 76 truly killed the studio for me. FO4 was already on thin ice and Skyrim; while fun is very shallow for an RPG. But 76 burned countless bridges and flushed so much faith in the company. The moment Todd uttered ‘XXXX planets’ I just got brain blasts from his lies and tomfoolery for 76. There are other RPGs that are actually worthwhile. I can recommend Gedonia. It’s kinda rough and jank but the skill trees are awesome and skills can affect each other like old school RPGs.

[@WillStopka]

You can do the pirate stuff without being a double agent. But the commander will still act like you betrayed him and the UC

[@bealotcoolerifyoudid7217]

The level of Bethesda 'dropping the ball' is 16times in detail thats for sure. 🎉

[@titouancarre1527]

Listen, its just works ! 🥴

[@andrejz8954]

it*@@titouancarre1527

[@FD-ms2nm]

I agree.. i especially hate the npc’s insulting us non stop and god forbid you touch one you become the enemy of the galaxy

[@tifapanties25]

If you get into any gunfight. Sarah will leave you in a second! At least piper in fallout 4 was more of a rider.

[@nobletenshi7659]

In skyrim you could be reported to the authorities by chickens seeing you do the crime. So I not surpised.

[@kj12351]

The problem is not some npc being a dick. The real problem is we can't really do anything about it. In Fallout new vegas, you could skill check em to make them shut up, and if you had rep ( good or bad ) they would show some respect/fear. Not like in skyrim where you can be the most badass fucker to ever live and you still have to let some NOBODY walk all over you, that's not good rpg.

[@randallporter1404]

@@kj12351 The problem is, Bethesda writes them *ALL* as dicks.

[@lach7324]

I also feel like people and especially devs really misunderstand the "evil companion" thing. It doesnt and probably shouldnt be cartoonish villainy. Amoral scoundrels like Astarion and Zevran, good people led astray and struggling with temptations that lead them to bad places like Gale and Morrigan, people born into situations that shaped them to be cruel like Shadowheart and Lae'zel. Evil companions and amoral companions can be fun, likeable, have complex character arcs and nuanced opinions, and in some excellent games have roads toward redemption. They don't and shouldnt be sociopaths. Even Minthara, by far the most evil in BG3 is a character and a real person.